Filling out that tax thing turned out to be more of a deal that I had planned. I didn't have my IBM form and I had a devil of a time trying to get into the IBM pension website. And my search terms weren't working for my tax payments in the credit union's website. Fortunately, Mint wasn't not being nearly so persnickety. And then right in the middle, the house cleaner came.

So I shut it all down and bugged out. Got everything on my list done and when I got into the car at the last place, I checked the webcam and saw her going out the door all done. Nice. Home.

I finished up my swimsuit. The lining fabric is 2 way stretch, not 4 way and it was a bad decision to use it. But, I think it will still work. We'll find out tomorrow.

My baseball app - MLB @ Bat costs me something like $15 a year. I don't love it but I use it a lot so I pay. My subscription comes due on March 1. Today I got an email with a code for a free year of the Premium (the $115) version because I'm a member of the Diamond Club! Very cool. The good news is that the premium version includes tv broadcast of all the baseball games in the major leagues... except... the home Mariner games. (They are blacked out so that the advertisers on TV network that broadcasts the games have no competition.)

I have a big envelope of tax stuff to send to the CPA. I have no clue how much postage it needs. I could walk up to the post office which is about 4 windy, cold, blocks. And there's always a long line.

OR I could save my old lady strength and walk the 1.5 cold, windy blocks to 13 Coins. The special on Wednesdays is Beef Stroganoff.

Yes, I could do both but they are in opposite directions and I'm very nearly at my daily tracker goal already. Overkill and have I mentioned it's cold?

Tomorrow I can go to the other post office that has a self service counter... So, shocking no one, I'm sure, strog wins!!

The house cleaner should be here in an hour or so. While she cleans, I'll errand. I have a car full of Goodwill to drop off and then I'll go see if there's anything there I need, as long as the car's empty...

Then I need to pop by the pharmacy at the clinic and get a prescription filled. It's one I use as needed and most of the time I don't need. But, I'm running low. One prescription lasts me 6 months or more. I looked up last night to see if mail order would work $$ wise. It's three times more quantity than I need but if the price was right. The price was not. So I'll swing by this morning and get it done.

Meanwhile the toe is not worse and maybe a teensy weensy better. My chapped face is dramatically better. I've been slathering vaseline all over the affected areas every morning before my swim. I think that's done the trick.

I think I got the last of my tax stuff in yesterday. There may be one more piece I think I have enough to at least send it off to the CPA once I fill out his little program.

And the swimsuit which didn't get finished last night will absolutely get done today. Just in time, too. I noticed this morning that one of my stalwart suits was getting a little crufty in the back. I suspect its days are numbered. Good thing I have more in the pipeline. Much as I'd love to swim nude, I'm thinking the gym might frown on that.

It was a standing family joke. Mostly my sister but I think my brother and I were guilty, sometimes, too. An appeal argument for anything we were denied was always "But, everyone in my class..." has or does or is going to do X.

And then the adult du jour (usually Mom) would respond "If everyone in your class jumped over a cliff, would you?"

Well, duh. Of course I would. Whadya think, you raised an individual thinker??

I cannot for the life of me remember how/why I started down this road. My brain is having a use it or lose it moment/day/week/year...

I'm soaking my toe again. I think it's feeling a tiny bit better and I want to encourage it in that direction so ... another round of toe swimming.

Oh wait! It was about the snow. Every Seattle person on my Twitter feed is reporting snow. Snow in Capital Hill (2 miles from here). Snow in West Seattle (3 miles as the crow flies). Snow all over... Except... here. As I explained to my mother with every appeal "It's just not fair!!!" Which of course netted "Life's not fair." We worked from a very predictable script in my house

My new swimsuit is ready for elastic and then it will be ready for the pool. I redid the pattern so, hopefully, it will work even better than the others.

This morning I read about the motorcycle wreck and another wreck yesterday morning on the bridge I cross twice in the early hours. Turns out at least one of them (as reported by the driver on the neighborhood blog) was caused by black ice. Another driver on the road at the same time reported that he could see it on the road.

I went over that road twice and never saw it or even thought to look. Yikes. It's really cold out there this week. Really cold. The lady who opens up the gym has even taken to opening up a few minutes early to let the handful of us who are waiting in to warm up. I'd much rather than chilly weather than hot but even so, I'm a little over this cold. If you add snow, we can talk but if dry, then off my lawn!

My face is a little better. Yesterday and today I slathered vaseline all over the chapped parts and it seemed to have helped. Plus I kept some kind of cream/moisturizer/white face on it all day. It's not as rough, dry and itchy and the broken skin is gone... So maybe if I keep this up...

My toe is no better BUT, at least it's no worse. I'm going to keep up the soakings for a while and hope for better results. Also keep it moisturized and wrapped. Thankgod for my Crocs - at least I have shoes that I can wear painlessly.

However, I'm not thinking I'm going to need shoes today. It's just colder than is fun to be outside for no good reason. Tomorrow is house cleaner day and I'll go out then, but today, home and warm are the headlines.

I think I might make a swimsuit. I have enough winter clothes and I can't get inspired for summer clothes when it's so cold out. The more suits I have in rotation, the longer they will last and there are only three in rotation now. So I think another one would be a good Tuesday project.

I'm all face and toe today. My face is chapped and my toe is in hurtsville. fionnabhar talked me into putting a thread of dental floss under the edge of my toenail to encourage it to grow out of my foot.

Great plan except guess who has no dental floss. I have 37 gazillion of those floss sticks with the pokey end. I mean really, I found a draw of them today and then a whole unopened package. And no dental floss. Finally I found a tiny package of it from the Holiday Inn. I have no clue how old it is, likely old enough to vote. And too fat to fit under my toenail. It's there but probably not for long.

So I got in the car and headed off to Walgeens. I got some dental floss and some ingrown toenail cream and bandages. And then I thought I'd get something for my chapped face. DIAPER CREAM!! Perfect. What a great idea. Gentle enough for a baby's butt but strong enough to heal chapped skin.

I forgot a key issue...

No need to blend diaper cream into the skin. In fact, since it is mostly zinc oxide, it will never blend in. Old white lady in the parking lot of a Walgreens in a mainly black neighborhood smearing solid white cream all over her face... who the fuck do we report that kind of mania to???

I crack myself up.

It is fucking freezing out today and still windy. But I doubled down on the epsom salts so we're good. The next soaking will be in about an hour/hour and a half. Not sure when I'll white face up again.

I have this toe that has been hurting on and off for weeks and weeks now. Finally yesterday, I took it to Dr. Internet. I suspected it was not gout because it felt different, and didn't get dramatically worse over time and the pain wasn't in the joint. Turns out, the pain is really localized to one side of the nail. It's the big toe and even though there is no outward signs, I really think it's an ingrown toenail situation. So today starts 3 or 4 twenty minute soakings in warm water with Epsom salt every day. We'll see how that goes but I'm hopeful.

We had really high winds over the weekend. They closed part of one of our floating bridges because the waves on the lake were too high. But there were no winds forecast for today. Ooops. Turns out there were freakishly high wind gusts as I was topping another bridge to the pool. The West Seattle bridge rides high over water and roads. My little Smart car was getting blown all over the road. It was really kind of frightening. I made it but was not looking forward to the trip home.

On said trip, it turns out a motorcyclist on my same route was not so lucky. There were all manner of cops and firefighters and other aid vehicles on both sides of the bridge as I came home. Also several cars involved. What a mess. I was glad to get home in one piece.

The pool was mine alone this morning. As I was getting out of the pool, one of the regulars came in and I remarked at the lack of crowds. His answer was "Well, if you don't have to go to work, why in the heck would you get up at this hour to swim?" er, well... I just left him with a "have a nice swim".

Ok, now we have a situation. I fixed up the hot water and Epsom salt and brought it over to my chair and plopped my foot in it. 20 minutes ago. I brought no towel or anything else. It seems I have lost my project management skills.

Oh well, I'll air dry it I guess. Also, note to me... roll up your pant leg next time, stupid.

I need to make a run up to the sewing shop but, I just saw on Instagram that they are observing weekend hours and so opening up later than normal. Good to know. I don't remember President's Day being such a big deal back in the day but 1. It wasn't President's Day for most of my 'back in the day ' and 2. My memory sucks and 3. I can't remember 3 (see 2).

Today turned out to be a computer day... After PixelBook deal was solved, then I investigated the problem. Turned out it was the easiest of all to solve. It wasn't the chromebook. It wasn't the charger. It was the silly USB C cable that connects the two.

Meanwhile on the way to finding a potential fix, I discovered that my Windows laptop was maxing out storage. I rarely use the Windows laptop. I've always had it for when I absolutely, positively had to have Windows. Otherwise, it petty much served as a monitor for web cam streaming and artwork.

And for a year or two, it's just been building temp files. No clue why. But the drive was clogged with them. So many that deleting them was fairly tricky. Also since I had no idea why they were there (in such massive numbers) I wasn't sure what, if anything, I was breaking. Usually deleting temp files has zero penalty but I'd never seen so many.

They are all gone now and the drive which had 10% free space this morning, now has 60% and so far nothing appears broken. I also remembered to back up my email and my Live Journal. I need to spend some time figuring out how to automate those.

This morning I got my Pixelbook from the living room and took it into bed with me to internet before it was pool time. Before I left, I plugged it back in to its regular spot in the living room. When I got home it was dead. And would not charge. Door nail dead. I tried all of the troubleshooting tips and then called Google. Who, after having me retry all the troubleshooting tips, said they'd be in touch in 24-48 hours. Not impressed.

Then I posted about the problem on the Google forums and pretty soon "Jim" suggested that I try using a charger from some other USB C device. I had tried my phone's charger with no luck. But, I also have a Pixel C tablet and I tried it. BINGO!! Charging now. Whew.

And I'll bet once it gets charged, it will happily charge again with its own charger. But if not, warranty.

That little adventure took a disconcerting chunk out of my morning.

Twitter just told me that there was hail falling in Capital Hill - a neighborhood about 3 miles from here. Here we have bright sunshine and barely any clouds. Seattle has such weird weather sometimes.

This old chromebook is really a dog. I got it years ago for less than $150. I got it because T-Mobile had this deal where you could get 500MB of free data a month on LTE devices for life. It was/is a sweet deal to have around for emergencies. I use it on one of my old monitors in the living room and keep a screensaver of revolving photos on it. Works great for both of those purposes, just not for real working use.

I have nothing big planned for today. Actually, nothing small either. I did a load of laundry earlier which needs folded and put away. I have breakfast dishes that need to be washed. And really that's about it for the plans.